Rise of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party leads to spate of immigrant attacks in Greece

In the latest reported attack, a 28-year-old illegal Egyptian immigrant was
beaten by men armed with clubs and iron bars as he slept on his roof to
escape a summer heat wave.

Abu Zeid Mubarak Abu Zeid said he woke to see several men setting upon him. “They
were trying to kill me, I swear that they wanted to kill me. I passed out
and woke up in hospital.”

He was left with a double fracture of the jaw, a broken nose, and needed
substantial stitching on his head.

The gang of ten assailants then smashed windows as they tried break into the
house in Perama, a working class district near the port of Piraeus. They
were defeated by locks on the doors.

“If they had got in I don’t know where we would be now,” said Abu
Habid Saad, the victim’s cousin, who has been in Greece
for 15 years.

“They were swearing and shouting ‘come out so we can teach you a lesson’.
One had a Golden Dawn t-shirt,” he said.

“We are family men. We have always lived peacefully, we never had any
differences and never expected such violence,” he added.

A Golden Dawn candidate posted a YouTube message the previous day warning
Egyptians in the area that “complaints had been received” and that
they would have to “reckon with” the party.

Last week a Jerusalem Post photographer was hospitalized after he was set upon
by black t-shirted thugs with sticks and batons. He had started taking
pictures after seeing them chase dozens of immigrants down the central
Patision Avenue.

Golden Dawn has denied any role in beatings, although it has campaigned on
ridding Greece of virtually all migrants and the daughter of its leader and
two MPs elected last month were arrested in a June 4 assault on a Pakistani
man who happened to be passing a party motorcycle rally.

One of those, Ilias Panagiotaros, this week threatened to remove immigrant
children from hospitals to make room for Greek babies.

He also said that any MPs from other parties who “uttered rubbish about
national issues” would as a warning be shown a video of party spokesman
Ilias Kasidiaris slapping a communist candidate live on television.

The polling data showed that despite widespread condemnation support for
Golden Dawn rose by two percentage points after the incident, when
Kasidiaris also threw a glass of water over another woman.

Rather than apologise, Ilias Kasidiaris has sued the two women and the
television station for defamation.

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